DTM Lausitzring: Adrenaline rush for Nico Müller 🎥
WEEKEND TIPS FOR ZUSEHER At the Lausitzring, the fastest corner of the year awaits Nico Müller and his DTM colleagues. The ADAC GT Masters makes a guest appearance in Austria and Formula 1 in Spain.
The second DTM season with GT3 sports cars got off to an extremely encouraging start for Nico Müller at Portimão on May 1. With his eleventh career victory, the first in Team Rosberg's Audi R8 (see highlights video), the Bernese pro hoisted himself to second place in the championship after the first race weekend.
His ambitious goal for the coming weekend is nothing less than to take over the top spot in the standings. The overall leader is the Italian Mirko Bortolotti (Lamborghini) with 35 points ahead of Müller (28) and the Austrian Lucas Auer on Mercedes (26).
A real courage curve
However, a special task awaits him and his DTM colleagues at Lausitz. Only the GT3 sports cars of the DTM will enter Turn 1 of the EuroSpeedway Lausitz. This is a long, slightly banked left-hand bend that can accommodate two, three or even four cars side by side.
The angle of inclination is not as great as in American steep curves. That's why it doesn't go full speed, but at around 250 kilometers per hour it's faster than on any of the eight racetracks on the 2022 DTM calendar. All 28 drivers and the only female driver in the field are brave enough to tackle it with a slight lurch of the gas pedal, but they also admit to having to take their hearts in both hands. One or two wall impacts last year proved just how tricky this corner is.
Nico Müller: "Last year, I almost wet my pants in this corner."
New territory for "Ricky" Feller
Ricardo Feller wants to lay a foundation stone with two points wins for top 10 finishes in Portugal, which he wants to build on with the ABT team.
Ricardo Feller: "I have good memories of the Lausitzring. The track variant with Turn 1 is new to me, but I love high-speed corners. From there, I can hardly wait to start there."
The two DTM races, which start at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, will be broadcast live by ProSieben (broadcast starts at 1 p.m.). In addition, the streaming platforms will show ran.de, ServusTV On (servustv.com) and DTM Grid (grid.dtm.com) almost completely dominated the Lausitzring action.
The spearhead is missing in the ADAC GT Masters
The Swiss teams and drivers got off to a similarly good start to the 2022 ADAC GT Masters as Müller did in the DTM on April 23/24. Because last year's champion Feller's priority is the DTM, only his German ADAC GT team partner Jusuf Owega will be defending the championship lead with the Belgian with Dries Vanthoor at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg.
On the other hand, Raffaele Marciello (Mercedes), Patric Niederhauser (Audi) and Emil Frey Racing hope to build on the results of Oschersleben. The man from Ticino comes to Styria in second place in the standings, "Nidi" in fourth and the best-placed Lambo from Safenwil (Perera/Rougier) in fifth.
Everything live on TV or Internet
With a total of 56 points to be awarded in the two qualifying sessions and races, their gap to Owega (37 points) of seven, eight and nine points is kept within limits, so that there could still be a leader of the standings from Switzerland after the second ADAC weekend.
All ADAC GT Masters races will start at 1 p.m.. TV partner NITRO will broadcast them live from Lausitz on Saturday and Sunday from 12.30 p.m. onwards. The highlights of both races are broadcast on the same race day on the YouTube channel of the ADAC GT Masters. The two races for the Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland (with Alexander Fach from Schwyz), which both start at 2:40 p.m., will also be broadcast live on TV on NITRO.
On the Internet, the races can be viewed in livestream on RTL+, and adac.de/motorsport can be tracked. On the informative ADAC Motorsport website and on sport.com the GT4 Germany, Formula 4 and TCR Germany, which also feature Swiss participation, will also be broadcast live.
More overtaking maneuvers at the Spanish GP
The Formula 1 teams will tackle the sixth round of the 2022 World Championship in Spain on Sunday. The Circuit de Catalunya will be a good test to see whether the new technical regulations for 2022 have really made it easier for the cars to follow one another and thus overtake better. The teams are very familiar with the GP circuit in Barcelona from tests in the spring, but overtaking maneuvers are a challenge here.
After the convincing victory over Ferrari in Miami, this will not prevent world championship leader Max Verstappen from risking every overtaking maneuver if he is not in front from the start. 23 of the 31 Formula 1 races to date at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya have been won from pole position, proving just how important qualifying is.
After Valtteri Bottas' brilliant fifth-place finish in Miami, Alfa Romeo Sauber in Hinwil is therefore hoping for a continuation of the top performances of its driver jewel as early as the allocation of grid positions.
Qualifying as recording on SRF or live on ORF
Because the parallel broadcast of the Ice Hockey World Championships in Finland and the Athletics Diamond Meeting in Birmingham have priority for Swiss television, Saturday's qualifying will only be shown in a recording from 5 to 6:15 p.m. on SRF info.
ORF1 will broadcast the qualifying session live with German commentary and news from 3.25 p.m. until around 5.25 p.m. With Michael Weinmann and GP expert Marc Surer as commentators, SRF zwei will then be live on Sunday from 14.20 to probably 16.50.
